Book Nod: The New Atheist Crusaders

I’ve been sharing some of the books in my pile for review, usually trying to match up books I’ve received with people who I think will enjoy them. Although I appreciate the humour of The Wittenburg Door, I loaned Becky Garrison‘s latest book to my friend Mike before I’d had a chance to read it. Asked for a quick response on the book, he said the following:

In her new book, The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail: The Misguided Quest to Destroy Your Faith, Becky Garrison shifts the cross-hairs from her usual (deserving) targets to take on the famous godless gurus you can’t stop hearing about nowadays: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, et al. Her weapon of choice? Humour. Sharp, witty, satirical humour, to be more descriptive. Becky Garrison is a Senior Contributing Writer for The Wittenburg Door, and is quite adept at poking fun while getting across a serious point. As she says in the book, “shooting down false idols is what I do for a living.” She uses this rare talent to skillfully poke holes in the new atheists’ anti-religious arguments.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, evidenced by the fact that it took me less than a week to finish reading it (I’m a painfully slow reader, so for me, less than a week is fast). I would highly recommend this book to anyone, be they Christian, Muslim, or agnostic. I’d even recommend atheists read it – because if you can’t laugh at yourself…

3 Comments

Disclosure: I’m an atheist. But I’ll give this book a gander if I can find it in the bookstore. I seriously doubt though, that the author can find new ground in all the traditional ‘proofs’ and ‘arguments’ that believers have been trying to use for centuries. All of which have been completely destroyed with logic and reason. And the same arguments keep being brought up by theists over and over. Those who don’t study the history of these arguments are duped into thinking they are airtight arguments that prove god, when they aren’t!

As to the ‘ANTI’-religious stance, I look at it this way. If you had a child who was still in his late 20’s or 30’s who STILL believed in Santa Clause and Easter Bunny, you would probably try your best to lift these false beliefs from them, for their own good. This is how Anti-theists behave towards your god, I think. Only in many cases, a belief in a god in modern day can be even more dangerous than a belief in Santa.

Stephen – thanks for that. Knowing the author (I haven’t read the book myself), I don’t think it’s intended as a once-for-all final-proof of the existence of God, more like a light-hearted poke at some of the arguments. The magazine she contributes to is mostly sarcastic dry satire in the religious vein (you might like it for that reason), so I expect the humour in the book to be somewhat similar. The Door is known for poking fun at some of the behaviour of Christians, which is where I think you would be correct about belief in the existence of God being a danger. To be precise, it’s not the belief itself that is such a danger, but what some people feel compelled to do or say in his name that is so misguided according to the beliefs they claim to espouse as recorded in whatever holy book they follow, be it the Bible, the Qur’an, or whatever. For all of the religious, the actions of some of these extremists and fundamentalists should be seen as somewhere on a continuum between embarrassment and dangerous.

From my perspective, this is not an argument that logic alone can prove either way… it’s been approached with logic for a couple hundred years (at least) now, and the issue hasn’t yet been resolved conclusively on that basis. It’s been resolved to the personal satisfaction of many people of course, but not universally to the satisfaction of all. You and I can both be highly intelligent, highly logical people, but sit across the table approaching this with logic and come out with different conclusions, thinking the other person “just doesn’t see it” (no sleight to either of us). It’s almost a unique kind of argument, and not one that I typically engage in for that reason.

Mike
on Saturday January 31, 2009 at 3:53 pm

I certainly agree that no one can prove the existence of God. But there are enough evidences and logical arguments to convince me (and many others of course). On the other hand, no one can prove that God doesn’t exist either. But there is enough pain in the world and enough evil things that have been done by the various religions throughout history to convince many that a good, personal God couldn’t possibly exist. There’s simply no proof – for either side.

Brother Maynard is right. The book isn’t intended to prove anything to anybody. I think the intent is to bring the “new atheist crusaders” down a notch or two. By “new atheist crusaders”, she’s talking about the rabid, fundamentalist, even evangelical atheists that pray for the death of all religion, under the misguided notion that the world would be a peaceful nirvana if only people didn’t believe any of this superstitious mumbo-jumbo. That’s bull shit. And Becky is good at calling it like she sees it.